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Dessert

Hot Chocolate Sauce

A sweet chocolate sauce made with water, sugar, chocolate, milk, arrowroot, cinnamon, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Hot Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil water and sugar together for 5 minutes.

  2. Rub chocolate smooth in milk.

  3. Dissolve arrowroot in cold water.

Make the sauce

  1. Add chocolate and arrowroot mixture to boiling water and sugar.

  2. Boil for another 5 minutes, stirring steadily.

  3. Add cinnamon and vanilla, then serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Arrowroot + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Arrowroot + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the sauce a syrupy body.
Grated chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and some body once melted into the liquid.
Milk
Carries the chocolate smoothly and adds creaminess and richness.

The step that matters

Stirring while the arrowroot mixture boils. Arrowroot thickens when heated and can clump or stay lumpy if it is not stirred steadily as it boils, so the sauce may end up uneven in texture.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, chocolate, milk, cinnamon, vanilla):

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Beetrootfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate, milk, cinnamon, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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